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| Forecaster Pat Pagano |
Pat Pagano, the meteorologist who has delivered weather on WALK/97.5 FM for 50 years, will deliver his final official forecast next Thursday.
The 75-year-old will also end the daily weathercasts he files for other Connoisseur-owned Long Island stations: WHLI/104.7, WWSK/94.3 and WWWF/103.1. Connoisseur had not named a replacement by Thursday afternoon.
No personality tied to a New York-area station — or to this Patchogue one — has been on the air longer, and few have filed more reports. Pagano records about 10 a day. In a business now defined by layoffs, firings and “rightsizing,” that run makes him an anomaly.
“I can’t think of a soul inside [this station] or outside doing the same thing for 50 years,” said Patrick Shea, WALK’s director of operations. “He’s certainly one of a kind and I’d keep him forever, but everyone deserves a break. We were blessed to have him for so long.”
Pagano called the split amicable, but said he does not like where forecasting is headed. Listeners now check social media and YouTube, he said, and artificial intelligence has entered the field. Those forces, he said, “have played havoc” with the work.
“I’m thinking, this is brutal,” he said in a phone interview with Newsday. “My contract is up in October, and if I opt to get out now, I could avoid all of this for the coming winter. The stress — the whole bit — pretty much pushed me to give it up at the end of my contract period.”
He is not a WALK employee. He is contracted to produce the prerecorded forecasts and to do occasional crosstalk with the DJs. In 1974 he launched MetroWeather, a service that supplied reports to dozens of stations and to clients that included the Mets and the television productions “Chicago P.D.” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” He sold the company two years ago. For most of his career he filed from offices at Kennedy Airport, later from Valley Stream.
“Am I going to miss it?” Pagano said. “Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, but I’ll get over it — and just to know that I can sleep beyond 3:30 or a quarter to 4 every morning.”